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Examining Dangers Posed by the Willful Blindness Doctrine in the War on Terror

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Examining Dangers Posed by the Willful Blindness Doctrine in the War on Terror CAGING CARELESS BIRDS: EXAMINING DANGERS POSED BY THE WILLFUL BLINDNESS DOCTRINE IN THE WAR ON TERROR SHAWN D. RODRIGUEZ* TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 692 2. THE WAR ON TERROR ................................................................. 696 2.1. 9/11 as a Catalyst for Change in Policy .......................... 696 2.2. Detainment Centers and Extraordinary Rendition ........ 699 2.3. Military Commissions .................................................... 701 2.3.1. Prosecutions of Detainees Accused of Planning the 9/11 Attacks ..................................................... 709 2.4. Domestic Terror Trials .................................................... 711 2.5. Foreign Criminal Indictments and Domestic Civil Suits Involving U.S. Officials ......................................... 712 3. WILLFUL BLINDNESS AND KNOWLEDGE ................................... 713 3.1. Theory of Willful Blindness in U.S. Criminal Law ........ 714 3.1.1. Knowledge and Understanding ............................. 715 3.2. U.S. Legal Rule on Willful Blindness ............................. 717 3.2.1. Willfulness Versus Negligence .............................. 719 3.2.2. Increasingly Frequent Use and Expansion of the Doctrine in U.S. Law ............................................ 720 3.3. Willful Blindness in International Criminal Law: Joint Criminal Enterprise ............................................... 721 * J.D. Candidate, University of Pennsylvania Law School, May 2009. I would like to thank Professor William Burke-White for his invaluable advice regarding the content and organization of this Comment. I also would like to thank former colleagues Richard J. Schaeffer, Hillary Schaeffer, and Brian Rafferty for their supervision and guidance regarding much of my early research on willful blindness. Finally, I owe many thanks to the editorial staff of the University of Pennsylvania’s Journal of International Law, specifically including Anya Grossmann, Rushmi Ramakrishna, and Jonathan Fortney, for their hard work and patience. All errors are my own. 691 Published by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository, 2014 692 U. Pa. J. Int’l L. [Vol. 30:2 4. CRITICISM AND IMPROPER USE OF THE WILLFUL BLINDNESS DOCTRINE ................................................................. 727 4.1. Confusion Between Willfulness/Knowledge and Negligence ....................................................................... 727 4.1.1. Complexity of Willful Blindness Jury Instructions ........................................................... 729 4.2. Court Criticisms and Suggested Reforms ....................... 733 5. SPECIFIC DANGERS OF THE WILLFUL BLINDNESS DOCTRINE IN THE WAR ON TERROR ............................................................. 736 5.1. Overinclusiveness ........................................................... 736 5.2. Limitations of Knowledge and Understanding by Factfinders ...................................................................... 739 5.3. The Finality of Execution as Punishment ....................... 742 5.4. Threats of Coercion ......................................................... 743 5.5. Critical Responses ........................................................... 744 5.5.1. Regarding Practicality .......................................... 748 6. Conclusion .................................................................................. 749 1. INTRODUCTION The United States-led War on Terror1 has reignited a fierce normative debate between advocates of the potentially competing interests of civil rights and national security. On one hand, some argue that using the broadest measures available to capture and prosecute alleged terrorists around the world is either advisable or necessary in order to protect national security.2 Under this view, the interest in capturing and neutralizing potential threats to public safety outweighs the interest in protecting the civil and 1 The terms “War on Terror” or “war on terrorism” are used in the 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy to define the current U.S.-led set of military campaigns relating to combating terrorism. THE WHITE HOUSE, THE NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Introduction, 27, 30, 31 (2002), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2002/nss.pdf [hereinafter 2002 NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY]. As the term “War on Terror” is the most commonly used, this Comment will use that term throughout. 2 See, e.g., Ashcroft Eager to Expand Police Powers, NEWSMAX.COM WIRES, Oct. 26, 2001, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/10/25 /160238.shtml (quoting then Attorney General John Ashcroft: “Let the terrorists among us be warned . [w]e will seek every prosecutorial advantage. We will use all our weapons within the law and under the Constitution to protect life and enhance security for America.”). https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/jil/vol30/iss2/6 2008] WILLFUL BLINDNESS DOCTRINE 693 procedural rights of the accused. On the other hand, some argue that prioritizing the accused’s civil rights throughout their capture and prosecution is both advisable and necessary in order to protect national security and values.3 Under this view, the interest in maintaining procedural integrity or legitimacy of the legal system in dangerous times outweighs the interest in a potentially overinclusive prosecutorial policy. This Comment takes the latter view with specific regard to the issue of the appropriate parameters of the mens rea requirements used to prosecute and convict accused terrorists, narrowly focusing on the doctrine of willful blindness. Willful blindness4 as a concept has long been a part of U.S. criminal law as a valuable means to convict those accused of committing offenses requiring a mens rea of knowledge who deliberately act to avoid inculpatory knowledge. Recently though, the willful blindness doctrine has grown dangerously overinclusive, resulting in a highly increased risk of convicting defendants who have not acted willfully. Many thinkers have questioned logical inconsistencies in the current doctrine, and courts have struggled to formulate clear and proper jury instructions on willful blindness due to confusion over the doctrine’s proper scope. Additionally, courts and scholars have increasingly criticized the doctrine’s tendency to convict defendants for mere negligence, or at worst, for mere guilt by association. With most terror charges requiring a mens rea requirement of “knowledge” or “willfulness” (particularly 3 See generally William W. Burke-White, Human Rights and National Security: The Strategic Correlation, 17 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 249, 280 (2004) (arguing that a reconceptualization of the relationship between human rights and national security, including adherence to procedural safeguards relating to human rights, may yield innumerous social, legal, and political benefits). 4 “Willful blindness” is perhaps the most common term for the concept discussed in this Comment, and will be used throughout for the sake of consistency. However, the same concept is alternatively referred to by numerous equivalent terms, such as “deliberate ignorance,” “deliberate blindness,” “willful (or wilful) ignorance,” or “conscious avoidance,” to name a few. Some also refer to willful blindness jury instructions as “ostrich” instructions, for example, see United States v. Alston-Graves, 435 F.3d 331, 338 (D.C. Cir. 2006), or “Jewell instructions,” after the Ninth Circuit’s ruling approving such an instruction in United States v. Jewell, 532 F.2d 697 (9th Cir. 1976). These terms are used interchangeably by both courts and scholars. For discussion of the multiplicity of terms used by courts and scholars for the willful blindness concept, see Thomas A. Hagemann & Joseph Grinstein, The Mythology of Aggregate Corporate Knowledge: A Deconstruction, 65 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 210, 222 n.62 (1997) and Robin Charlow, Wilful Ignorance and Criminal Culpability, 70 TEX. L. REV. 1351, 1352 n.1, 1354 n.8 (1992). Published by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository, 2014 694 U. Pa. J. Int’l L. [Vol. 30:2 conspiracy charges, for example), the dangers of the doctrine of willful blindness become highly relevant. These dangers are particularly acute when applied to the context of those accused of acts of international terrorism5 in U.S. courts and in military tribunals, where many defendants may face execution upon a guilty verdict. In short, this Comment argues that dangers posed by misconstruing and misapplying the willful blindness doctrine create a lurking problem of overinclusive prosecution. These dangers have heightened significance in the context of those accused of acts of international terrorism, who may be subject to execution if convicted. In light of this context, this Comment argues that a reexamination of the willful blindness doctrine is necessary to prevent its improper and overinclusive use. This is not at all to say that prosecutions of accused terrorists should be limited in any way from ordinary prosecutions, or that any special protections should be afforded to such defendants beyond such ordinary paradigms. Rather, the argument is premised more narrowly on the idea that sufficient legal avenues to convict terror suspects exist such that an overbroad construal of willful blindness is neither necessary nor advisable to effect such prosecutions. Thus, expressed most basically, this Comment contends that the willful blindness doctrine should not be
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